My understanding is that black powder is an explosive even without being contained, while smokeless powder will only explode when contained. In either case, both can only produce a low order explosion. And from what I understand, even a high explosive such as ANFO or Peroxide can conflagrate rather than detonate depending on the method used to set them off.

I think banning or limiting access to powder (black or smokeless) would be counterproductive to the anti-freedom cause at this point; just another way to fire up the pro-freedom side. Doesn’t mean they won’t do it, but it would graphically demonstrate the need to speak up before they chose for whoever’s next.

Has cordite even been used for anything for like 60 years? Or maybe for loading ammunition for double rifles regulated for it?

Of course, people still use “cordite” as a generic term for any nitrocellulose based propellant, but in most contexts, I take the use of the word as an indicator that the person speaking doesn’t know much about what they’re talking about.

Fox is reporting it was likely a home-made explosive with ingredients that could have been available from a home center or even a grocery store and it was likely in a pressure cooker type pot.
It seems to be similar to other terrorist attempts, like the Christmas day bomber.

I have not heard one mention of any type of gun powder use

Take that for what its worth.

They are still leaning to a person with Saudi ties rather than “right wing” at least.

see the blog for details but the bottom line is: Low explosive, probably black powder or equivalent in a poorly contained pipe-bomb type vessel (pressure cooker seems unlikely, it’s really too big for this) with an effective blast radius of about 15 feet, and massively too much fuel for the container resulting in external combustion for almost a full second after the container ruptures.